I am grateful for technology which allows me to attend interesting lectures all over the world without leaving Puebla. As I listened to Esther Duflo´s speech about the role of evidence in the fight against poverty, I reflected on BCDF´s work in San Andrés Azumiatla. As the featured speaker of Center for Global Development's sixth annual Richard H. Sabot Lecture, Esther Duflo shared her latest research on new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives.
Esther Duflo is a leading development economist known for her work applying impact evaluation, randomized controlled trials and other field experiments to identify which development interventions actually work. Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Esther shared that many development interventions fail because they do not address the real needs of the people. One of the lessons that I learned during BCDF´s business training in Azumiatla is that while small business owners need business training, other needs emerged that I had never considered. Our business training class had mostly women business owners who have to juggle domestic duties and managing their small businesses. One such need is psychological support for women who are often times victims of domestic violence and suffer from depression. This mental state affects how they communicate with their family members and how much energy they put into their businesses. The women in our training session felt completely on their own in overcoming obstacles and lacked a support structure necessary to make their businesses grow. Since all of the small businesses in Azumiatla are family owned, improving family relations is critical in order to help their businesses grow. I would have never discovered the need for support groups for women had I not spent significant amount of time in the community. Social development interventions that are designed from an office will never succeed since they will not address the subtle obstacles that poor people face.
Esther also talked about good politics being a precursor to good policy. I believe this rings true in Mexico. While a conditional cash transfer program is a good policy to incentivize poor people`s investment in education and health, without good politics the program´s impact will be diminished. In spite of some efforts to avoid political manipulation of this program, poor people enrolled in the program have been manipulated during electoral seasons. Good politics are indispensable for real social development. How can it be that Mexico invests more money into education than an average OCDE country and yet has some of the worst results on education indicators?
